Pipo Nguyen-duy’s series East of Eden originally shared a perspective with John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name, exploring the American landscape as a biblical paradise. Gradually, the project began to examine how the idea of paradise intersected with the casualties — both human and environmental — of the Vietnam War. Of the final incarnation of this body of work, Nguyen-duy writes:

Forty years after the war, the once destroyed landscape populated with school children in uniforms provided the perfect environment for my new work dealing with regeneration, hope, history, and legacy. The feral uniformed school children placed in the idealized landscape, without adults present, signify the beginning after the end.